Building community through content

Content Strategy for Bitmap Cafe

  • Content Marketing
  • Content Strategy
  • Writing
  • SEO Basics

🏪 Client Context

Bitmap is a fictional hybrid space for coffee lovers and creators. The goal was to turn Bitmap into the go-to hub for creative professionals in the city through a content strategy that spoke their language, inspired collaboration, and invited them in.

This is a fictional campaign developed to demonstrate my ability to design and analyze digital marketing strategies in realistic business contexts.

Four variations of the Bitmap Café logo shown in different color combinations. Each version features a medieval-style character beside the word “bitmap” in a geometric font—black on white, red on pink, yellow on brown, and light blue on royal blue.
A yellow and pink sandwich board sign placed on a city sidewalk. The sign reads “coffee, community, & creation” followed by details about workshops, local art, and free Wi-Fi at Bitmap Café.
A collection of Bitmap Café sticker designs on a black background, including pixel-art characters, a wizard holding a laptop, speech bubbles, and the Bitmap logo. Stickers read phrases like “creative energies,” “online, but caffeinated,” and “long live maker friends.

🔍 The Opportunity

Despite Bitmap’s strong aesthetic and quality offerings, weekday morning visits remained consistently low, revealing an underutilized revenue window during off-peak hours. At the same time, digital engagement—particularly on Instagram—had plateaued, signaling that Bitmap’s content wasn’t effectively capturing or converting audience interest into store visits.Customer behavior suggested that Bitmap was largely perceived as “just another coffee shop” rather than the creative community space it aspired to be. The lack of a direct communication channel, such as a newsletter, further limited Bitmap’s ability to build deeper relationships with its audience.

These insights uncovered a valuable opportunity:
  • Reposition Bitmap as a hub for creative connection
  • Leverage digital channels more strategically
  • Increase foot traffic and engagement
  • Strengthen the brand’s cultural relevance in the local scene

🛠️ Tools & Platforms Used

  • Meta Business Suite – for managing and analyzing Instagram content performance
  • Figma – for creating branded visuals and campaign materials
  • Google Analytics 4 – to understand user behavior and track conversions from digital to physical visits
  • Mailchimp – for building and managing the newsletter list and automating email campaigns
  • Notion – to organize campaign planning and content calendars
  • Surveys (Google Forms) – to gather insights on customer perception and interests

🚀 Execution

To solve the challenge, I developed and launched a 3-month content campaign focused on creativity, community, and weekday engagement:

1. Content Pillars & Storytelling

  • Behind the brew: Short video interviews with baristas and local creatives working from Bitmap.
    • Barista features: Day in the life vlogs of a barista's shift, how they make their favorite drinks, latte art tutorials, and similar intimate reels that portray Bitmap as ran by humans.
    • Local creative spotlights: Short interviews or visual semblances of people who work at Bitmap. Why they use the cafe as their studio, their creative processes, and the tools they can't live without.
  • Workspace vibes: A visual series featuring inspiring creative routines at the café.
    • Desk flat-lays: Arrange café tables with laptop, coffee, pastries, stationery—styled to look authentic but aspirational.
    • “A day at Bitmap” : Short clips of people arriving, ordering, settling in to work, chatting, typing, sketching. Visual diaries/vlogs romanticizing the mundane have gained popularity.
  • Bitmap Bulletin: A biweekly newsletter curating community events, user-generated content, and creative resources.
    • Calendar of upcoming events: Open mic nights, art shows, workshops. Local partner events nearby.
    • Event highlights: Photo essays from last event.
    • Staff picks: Staff members’ personal recommendations.
    • Featured Community Work: Illustrations, poems, short stories from patrons.
    • Discounts or partner offers.
A demonstration image for an Instagram photo-carousel showing four images of a barista named Laura. She stands smiling in the café, brews coffee, sketches in a notebook, and displays a drawing of the café interior. The background features Bitmap’s yellow, brown, and pink brand colors.
An Instagram post showing a tabletop scene with laptops covered in stickers, coffee cups, pastries, and AirPods. The caption describes Bitmap Café visitors sharing their workstation setups.
An Instagram post showing a young woman sitting outside Bitmap Café, smiling while holding a paper bag of pastries. The caption includes a quote about personal style and mentions Bitmap Café’s zine and interviews.

2. Instagram Reboot

  • Shifted from purely aesthetic posts to storytelling-based carousels and short Reels.
    • Stories from patrons, day-in-the-life mini-documentaries, and making-of videos
  • Created a UGC campaign with prompts like “What are you making today? Drop a pic, a sketch, or a random brain dump” inviting followers to share their routines.
  • Collaborated with local artists for content takeovers and in-person creative sessions.

3. Newsletter Launch

  • Designed a lead magnet titled “The Commons” — a phygital zine that goes around the topic of creativity in digital fields.
  • Promoted it through IG Stories and Link in Bio to grow the mailing list.
  • Used Mailchimp automation for welcome series and ongoing campaigns.

4. On-site Activation

  • Introduced “Open Coding Mornings” every Wednesday to encourage in-store visits.
  • Distributed QR codes on in-store materials linking to the digital content calendar and newsletter sign-up.

5. Planning and Workflow

  • Managed campaign planning using Notion.
  • Created and used audience personas to refine messaging.
A demo image for an Instagram photo-carousel post about a customer named Beatriz reading a novel. Images show a woman reading with coffee, a child photo inset reading on a couch, and a book titled North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Three vertical photos from Bitmap’s Instagram Stories showing laptop workstations. One person in a hoodie holds a drink, another holds coffee over a sticker-covered laptop, and a third sketches beside a computer.
A nine-tile Instagram feed layout showing café scenes, pastries, creative events, and typography posts. Includes croissants, coding meetups, sketching sessions, and a yellow poster titled “Showcase de Zines.”
Close-up of a printed zine titled “The Commons: Creativity on Digital Fields.” The cover shows a person reading in sunlight, overlaid with a pink grid of small pixel squares and retro digital typography.
Colorful poster for Bitmap’s “Open Code Mornings.” Large black text on pink, yellow, blue, and red shapes announces sessions for debugging, learning to code, and creative collaboration on Wednesdays 9 AM–12 PM.
Poster with bright orange and blue geometric blocks reading “Scan to see our calendar — events, workshops, galleries.” A large QR code appears at the bottom, with blurred people in a creative workspace behind it.
A brand persona card featuring Sofía Hernández, a smiling woman against a yellow background. Text describes her as a 29-year-old freelance illustrator and motion designer who visits Bitmap Café for creative inspiration and connection.
A brand persona card featuring Andrés López, a smiling man with glasses wearing a white shirt. The panel lists details such as his age, occupation as a front-end developer, goals, challenges, and why he visits Bitmap Café for community and creative energy.
A Notion interface displaying Bitmap Café’s August content calendar in dark mode. The calendar includes labeled entries for posts like “Open Coding Morning,” “Latte Art Tutorial,” and “UGC Call.”

📊 Results

  • +35% increase in weekday morning foot traffic over the campaign period.
  • +42% growth in Instagram engagement (likes, comments, shares, saves).
  • Built a newsletter list of 620+ subscribers in 3 months.
  • 8% average click-through rate on newsletter content.
  • Observed a notable drop in bounce rate from social → site in GA4.
  • Feedback from surveys indicated a +70% increase in brand association with terms like “creative”, “inspiring”, and “community”.

🧠 What I Learned

  • Storytelling is magnetic. It’s not just the product, it’s the people, rituals, and emotions around it that create lasting engagement.
  • Multi-channel sync pays off. Aligning social, email, and in-store messaging created a strong brand loop that increased conversions.
  • Early list-building is gold. A newsletter builds direct relationships you own—not rented on algorithms.
  • Blending digital + physical touchpoints enhances recall. QR integration and real-world events amplified impact and created more memorable experiences.